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9486 in the collection
Experts say TAKS test has systematic problems
Kudos to Herman Syers, Jr., though what happened to him was a travesty.
By Rhiannon Meyers
Ten years before the state unveiled its standardized TAKS test, Herman Syers Jr. was preparing for graduation.
In May 1993, the Santa Fe High School senior had bought his cap and gown and sent out invitations. Then he got the devastating news. He’d failed the math portion of the state standardized test, then called TAAS. He wouldn’t graduate.
“He was very upset, very depressed,” said his mother Linda Syers. “At first he said, ‘That’s it. I’m through. I’m finished.’”
He got a job with a towing company and, for a year, he gave up on the TAAS test, his mother said.
But then his tune changed.
AP
“He said, ‘They’re not going to take this away from me. I earned it. It’s mine and I want it,’” Linda Syers said.
Her son took the math test and failed. He kept doing so, again and again.
Each year, the test changed a little more. Each year, Herman Syers Jr. was even more distanced from his high-school education. Eventually, he asked the test administrator to put him a different room — he was too embarrassed to be seen taking the test among high-school students.
In 2005 — 12 years after he was supposed to graduate — Herman Syers Jr. passed the math TAAS test.
“I’m very proud,” Linda Syers said. “Getting that diploma made him feel like he was worth something.”
This year, more than 40,000 Texas seniors are in the same predicament as Herman Syers Jr. was in 1993. That means 16 percent of 244,346 Texas seniors who have earned all of their high-school credits won’t graduate because they failed at least one part of a compulsory TAKS test.
How does a Texas student pass all his high-school courses and still fail the state’s standardized test, which is designed to be an assessment of the state’s uniform curriculum?
Experts say the blame doesn’t necessarily lie with the students — sometimes the problems are systemic.
Technically, the TAKS test is based on the uniform Texas curriculum, called Texas Essential Knowledge of Skills (TEKS), said Stephanie Sandifer, the dean of instruction at Scarborough High School, Houston.
But sometimes, mostly in high school, a student’s course work does not align with TAKS objectives, said Sandifer, creator of the Web site Change Agency.
That could result in students earning good grades in their courses, but performing poorly on the TAKS test.
For example, the 10th-grade social studies TAKS test drills students about American history. In Texas, students take American history in eighth grade and 11th grade. So 10th-grade history teachers are required to take time out of their world history curriculum to review American History before the April test.
“If I am a 10th-grade history teacher and I only teach my world history TEKS, then my students may do very well and pass my class, while still failing the 10th-grade TAKS social studies test because they don’t remember American History from eighth grade,” Sandifer said.
The same example applies to the math and science TAKS tests, she said. For years, Texas students were required only to have three years of high-school math and science classes.
By the time they reached the 12th grade, they were no longer receiving daily instruction in either of those subjects. Coincidentally, Texas students tend to perform worst on the math and science portions of TAKS tests, said Kathy Barnett, a consultant hired by school districts such as Galveston to align the curriculum with the test.
In fact, Texas students perform so poorly in math and science that the state will rate a school accountable if 40 percent or more of its students pass the science exam and 45 percent pass the math.
It’s unfair to make students take a test on information they haven’t learned or to miss out on some curriculum content in order to review information from previous years, Sandifer said.
State legislators have voted to replace the TAKS test with 12 end-of-course exams. The bill is awaiting the governor’s approval.
The state Legislature has also mandated that students beginning high school in the fall take four years of math and science, which could help improve scores, Barnett said.
Experts agree that misaligned courses aren’t the only cause of TAKS failure.
Some teachers inflate their grades, causing students to earn As, when they should be earning Bs, said Grace Sammon, author of “Battling the Hamster Wheel: Strategies for Making High School Reform Work.”
Other teachers don’t adhere closely enough to the state standards, Texas Education Agency spokesman Debbie Ratcliffe said.
Some students suffer from test anxiety or poor test-taking skills, Sandifer said. Experts agree test anxiety can be alleviated through relaxation skills or counseling.
Some students who frequently fail the test begin to develop a perception of themselves as failures and then they give up, Sandifer said.
Still others suffer from a poor home life, or traumatic event, that could keep them from performing well on the test, Ratcliffe said.
Mitra Fallahi, an expert in standardized testing, said research shows that students perform poorly on high-stakes tests such as the TAKS test. A single test given at one time is the “worst way” to measure a student’s performance, said Fallahi, an associate professor at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.
But it has been the only uniform way to measure achievement in Texas, Ratcliffe said. Texas initiated standardized testing in 1980 and now all states use it one way or another, she said.
“It’s one way that you can hold the whole state to a certain expected level of learning and use the same yardstick to measure progress for everyone,” she said.
TAKS questions require students to answer at a higher, critical-thinking level, Sandifer said. Each question is reviewed by testing and higher-education experts, Ratcliffe said.
The TAKS test does provide an avenue for a school to gather information about its students, but one test should never be the sole indicator of a student’s ability or achievement, Sandifer said.
Sandifer called the TAKS test “summative standardized testing,” meaning that it sums up what a student has learned at certain points in school. She likened summative standardized testing to an autopsy.
“I don’t want to wait until my autopsy to find out how healthy I was,” she said. “We go to the doctor for regular health checkups, we check our temperature when we feel ill and, when exercising, we monitor our pulse rate.
“That is what assessment should be in the classroom — frequent, embedded, varied and used for improvement in at timely manner.”
The most effective form of assessment is made by teachers through tests, quizzes, papers, presentations and projects, she said, adding that the TAKS test places enormous pressure and stress on students, teachers and administrators.
Sandifer said that focusing only on the TAKS test distorts instruction and curriculum, resulting in a loss of effective teaching techniques and a narrowing of curriculum.
Ultimately, the TAKS test does not prepare students for college, she said, citing the example of college freshmen who pass the TAKS test but still need remedial college courses.
And there’s always the risk that Texas seniors who fail the TAKS and don’t graduate will just drop out rather than continue to try, Sammon said.
She cited the example of a Houston high-school senior who worked after school, took care of one child and was pregnant with another. She was set to graduate but couldn’t pass the English portion of the TAKS test and Sammon worried she would give up.
“What does it say about society when a school turns out a young woman at the age of 18 without a high-school education?” she said.
“What are we saying to a whole generation of children?”
A year ago, Kevin Smith sat among the throngs of people at Stingaree Stadium watching the Class of 2006 graduate.
All of his friends in the Texas City 2006 senior class graduated, but Smith had failed the TAKS test. Sitting at graduation, listening to the announcer call his friends’ names, he felt like bursting into tears.
“It hurt, big time,” he said.
Everyone told him to forget the diploma, get his GED and move on with his life, but he was determined to pass the test that constantly reminded him of how he’d let himself down.
Some days, he’d drive by Stingaree Stadium and picture himself in the crowd of 2006 graduates or walking across the stage. It gave him the determination to pass, he said.
Smith took the test three times in 11th and 12th grade and failed the science and math portions. He took it during the summer and failed. He got a job at Church’s Chicken, then at H-E-B, then at Sam’s Warehouse. He re-enrolled in classes at Texas City High School.
In February, he passed the math portion. One down, one to go, he thought.
In May, just weeks before the 2007 graduation, he passed the science portion. When he heard he would graduate, he cried.
“I couldn’t believe it really,” he said.
On graduation night, Smith sat among a crowd of students wearing matching black caps, with orange and black tassels. His grandparents, parents, friends, family, former teachers and recent coworkers went to watch him walk the stage. Now that he has his diploma, he plans to enroll at College of the Mainland.
He urged seniors who failed the TAKS to never give up.
“It’s a fight that’s going to be won sooner or later,” he said. “I just so happened to win.”
— Rhiannon Meyers
khou TV
2007-06-02
http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/khou070602_tnt_taksprobs.b00cebb.html#
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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